Is the Anglican Covenant Innocuous or a Serious Threat?

I enjoyed reading Bishop Alan's Blog on the Covenant, but surmised from his words in the comments section that he thinks the Covenant is fairly innocuous (whereas I feel it is a serious threat to Anglicanism). I asked my new friend Jonathan Clatworthy who is General Secretary of Modern Church, and these are his thoughts:

Supporters of the Anglican Covenant are currently trying to persuade the Provinces to vote in favour of it.

What do they say it will mean? That depends on where you live. In parts of the world where same-sex partnerships are strongly condemned, it’s all about ensuring that there are no gay bishops anywhere in the Anglican Communion, which will probably mean kicking the USA out of it. This is what Ian Ernest, the Archbishop of the Indian Ocean, argued at the Council of Anglican Provinces in Africa meeting in August.

For others the problem is much wider. Opposition to same-sex partnerships has successfully built up a head of steam behind a programme to centralise power in the Anglican Communion; but once the Covenant is in place there will be other disciplines to impose. Tom Wright, previously Bishop of Durham, has taken this line (‘Rowan’s Reflections: Unpacking the Archbishop’s Statement’, Anglican Communion Institute, 30.7.09).

In more tolerant parts of the world the Covenant is currently being presented as a minor, unimportant tidying-up exercise only of interest to church bureaucrats, so the rest of us don’t need to worry our pretty little heads and can safely leave it to the archbishops.

Why these mixed messages? The Covenant’s proponents faced a real dilemma: how to produce a text which on the one hand is forceful enough impose its demands on the provinces, but on the other will persuade them to give away their autonomy. The solution is to present the Covenant as an entirely voluntary agreement which does not affect autonomy. Provinces continue to act as they wish, so long as no other province objects.

However, the Covenant proposes to redefine the Anglican Communion so that henceforth it will contain only those provinces which sign. Signing means submitting to the judgements of the newly empowered international authority the ‘Standing Committee of the Anglican Communion’. Provinces which declined to sign would no longer be considered part of the Anglican Communion, and signatories would be liable to expulsion if they did not accept the Standing Committee’s judgements.

Thus the dilemma is resolved with a message familiar from the school playground: ‘You are free to do as you like, but if you do not do as we tell you, we shall all turn our backs on you and you will not be one of us’.

Church leaders will not lightly accept expulsion. In practice, once the Covenant was in place there would be immense pressure to toe the line on whatever issue the most intolerant chose to campaign about. One by one the Standing Committee would build up a set of pronouncements which became the Anglican teaching. We would be turned into a confessional sect demanding of our members assent to an ever-increasing list of doctrines.

The way to avoid this absurdity is to make sure the Covenant does not come into effect in the first place.